BenPaddon.co.uk

How will you feel when I tell you that on Monday, as my sister and her two friends Laura and Mike were walking home, a couple of kids started throwing bricks at them? How will you feel when I tell you that one of them managed to hit Laura in the back of the head, necessitating a call for an Ambulance? How will you feel knowing that, had a brick been thrown at the right time with the right amount of force, my sister could have been killed yesterday? And how will you feel when I tell you that the kids doing this were leaving the Mosque near where my Mum and sister live at the time?

It’s tricky, isn’t it. I can’t think of a single way of processing the events and explaining them to others that doesn’t carry racist undertones. Is it racist to say that these boys were Muslims leaving a Mosque, who decided for no real reason that my sister and her friends were somehow unpleasant and decided to throw bricks at them? Were their actions fueled by racism? The Police are certainly looking at it as a racially motivated assault. I, on the other hand, am just angry. I don’t care who they were or what they were doing at the time - all I care about is that they were throwing bricks at people - at my family. All of the other details are inconsequential. I don’t get how people can do shit like that to each other. What the fuck was their problem?

It’s left my sister feeling rather jaded. She’s angry and scared and pissed off and worried and I’m right there with her. I want to know who did this, and I want to see them punished for it. Mostly I’m thankful she wasn’t hit herself - she was the only one of the three who wasn’t hit, as Mike also took a brick to the head but apparently didn’t suffer any serious injury - and I’m up now at 12:47am worrying about what could have happened… what I am so glad didn’t happen.

I really hope Laura isn’t seriously hurt. I don’t think I could cope with losing two friends inside of a fortnight.